Richard Long

Richard Long

RichardLong was born in Bristol in 1945 and studied at the West of England College of Art and later at St Martin's College of Art, London, where he became associated with Hamish Fulton.  Long is a sculptor, photographer and also uses text; he is one of the best known British Land Artists.  Unlike Hamish Fulton his work generally alters the land, whereas Fulton travels through the land on foot observing and recording what he sees, but leaving it untouched.  Like Fulton, though, several of Richard Long's works are based on walks he has made.  Liz Wells 92011) tells us that he does not make major alterations to the land, instead preferring to lay trails or construct patterns.  In exhibitions, often pictures of places are over-written with literal descriptions of time taken, place and date.  I feel that some of the images of paths I have been taking for Assignment 3 in my Body of Work are similar to and were inspired by Richard Long's.  However, where I have photographed an actual path, Long has made a 'path' by walking backwards and forwards across the land and then photographed it as in this image below from the Tate and made in 1967.  The text below reads 'A Line Made By Walking'.

An example of one of my images from the Witham Valley is shown below.  The path here is made by many different people walking across the field, rather than one person walking backwards and forwards.

I was fortunate to be able to visit his retrospective exhibition of 2007, Walking and Marking 

Long, R. (1967) A Line Made By Walking [photograph] [online image] Tate. Available from: http://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/long-a-line-made-by-walking-ar00142 [Accessed 23.2.16]

Wells, L. (2011) Land Matters: Landscape Photography, Culture and Identity. London, I.B.Tauris